RICK ASTLEY © Peter Neill BEING A POP STAR IS WEIRD. THERE’S NOT MUCH HANGING OFF A YACHT IN THE CARIBBEAN. THE FOO FIGHTERS’ FAVOURITE GUEST STAR IS IN REFLECTIVE MOOD AS HE RELEASES HIS ‘BOOKEND’ COMPILATION THE BEST OF ME. IN A REVEALING INTERVIEW HE TELLS US ABOUT HIS S.A.W. YEARS, FORGING HIS OWN WAY, THE IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY LIFE AND A HEAVY METAL ALTER EGO. STEVE HARNELL ick Astley is having his Bob Dylan freshly recorded, ‘reimagined’ songs that different. The key, the tone of the whole thing, moment. Alongside their studio feature on the comp’s second disc are the structure is changed here and there.” incarnations, his new greatest hits intriguing reboots some distance away from The message is clear, though, the originals compilation The Best Of Me their 80s models. “Dylan has that thing of those 80s hits sound very much of their R includes striking reinterpretations where he just goes off on one on stage and time – Linn 9000 drum machine and all – but of his biggest moments. Fancy hearing Never even the musicians in his band don’t know their structures and melodies are timeless. Gonna Give You Up recast as a heart- what he’s up to until they get to a certain lyric “The Best Of Me is a bookend. Rick Astley’s new wrenching piano forte ballad? Together or moment,” Rick explains of His Bobness’ Re-recording the songs has been a nice compilation The Forever reworked as a late-night smoky jazz liking for on-the-fly radical transformations of experience,” adds Rick. “It’s been enjoyable Best Of Me includes a whole host of standard? Then step right this way… his back catalogue. “The one thing I’ve done to revisit something from 32 years ago and reworkings of his While we’re not in the realms of Tangled with my new versions is that I sing the same just pretend I’m from a different universe biggest hits Up In Blue performed as a polka here, the 10 melody, it’s just that everything else is and say, ‘This is how I’d do it today’. 62 63 RICK ASTLEY Pete Waterman had a first listen to the album the other day and remarked that [the reimagined version] made him realise just what a good song Together Forever is,” NEVER GONNA Astley adds. ROSÉ MEMORIES GIVE YOU UP As we meet up at an elegant Maida Vale ANATOMY OF A CLASSIC restaurant beside London’s Grand Union Canal, Rick has just caught up with “The strings are very Philly. Pete [Waterman] knew that I loved a lot of artists like Waterman and the pair are still on good Luther Vandross and Alexander O’Neal. Luther was beyond everybody, his voice terms. There’s obviously no hard feelings was unbelievable,” Rick explains. “I loved older artists like Al Green, Bill Withers almost 30 years on after the singer decided and Shalamar. A lot of those records had that American to strike out on his own and leave the SAW production feel to it. There are things about Never empire that helped him sell 15 million copies Gonna Give You Up that give it an American of his debut album. vibe. I loved that Colonel Abrams record “SAW wrote some really, really great Trapped, by the way, that influences the songs,” Rick reflects, glass of rosé in hand. bassline, although I’m not sure SAW knew “They were produced in a way that puts that I admired it at the time. them in a very exact moment in time. Even “I’ve always felt happy about the they wouldn’t have produced those records song. There was a time in my life where 10 years later in the same way. They had a I may have thought, ‘Oh, for God’s formula sound, but at the end of the day you sake! I have made other songs, you can still sit down and strum them on guitar or know’, even SAW tracks, but I count play them on piano and they still work.” myself lucky. It’s hard sometimes if the With SAW’s vision of making a UK pop first song you do is the biggest one production line to rival Motown’s success in you’ll ever have. That can be hard the 60s and 70s, Astley was keenly aware to swallow but it’s also such a door that he’d have to fit into a straitjacket formula, opener. It didn’t really stop for a despite being something of an anomaly on couple of years.” the label – he had an extraordinarily soulful voice that could rock you back on your heels. SAW’s relentless workload impacted on Astley at first; he struggled to elbow his way to the front of the queue ahead of labelmates very famous before they made their Kylie, Jason, Mel & Kim et al. records, it’s a totally different angle. “SAW became massively busy around the Having said that, there’s a bit of an actor in time I signed with them and I got put on the every singer. Like Frank Sinatra said, when he back burner,” Rick explains. “Initially, the read the lyrics, he had to really get into it: feel week it went to No.1. It had been on idea was to make records and release them it, believe it. For me, that’s acting.” the radio and we’d been on Top Of The Pops on the label they’d formed but the truth of it Rick adds that his best work comes from once or twice but we didn’t have a video. was they got a bit busy. SAW had a formula when he connects with it on an emotional MTV was in its prime and if you didn’t have a and were trying to create their own empire, level, although some songs are destined for video you didn’t exist. Why didn’t [the record their own legacy. They never got a drummer classic status no matter what. label] do it? I wonder if somebody was in, never got a bass player in. That became “Never Gonna Give You Up, for example, saying, ‘Let’s just hang on with a video for a their sound. What I would say, though, is if is a great song and there are a lot of people bit. Let people discover what he looks like you put on Say I’m Your Number One by who could have sung that and it would have rather than ram it down their throats…’ Princess, You Spin Me Round by Dead Or been a hit. Whether it would have been the “I’m not the ugliest person in the world but Alive, Mel & Kim’s Respectable and let’s say hit it became if it wasn’t a combination of we were in a period in the 80s where pop Venus by Bananarama then yes, they do SAW’s writing, production, my voice, and stars looked amazing and I didn’t really tick have an 80s feel to them, but the way I looked – that box. If we look through the whole life of you can’t say all those records ie 12 years old – music, it’s not just about the voice. There have sound alike. Through the mists I couldn’t say. All been plenty of artists with not much of a of time they probably seem a those things came voice who’ve got quite big careers out of it!” bit closer to each other but together perfectly.” when I made tea for them they The initial success of THE WORLD IS MINE all sounded different to me. Never Gonna Give You Astley’s success was astonishing. Debut S.A.W. HAD A SAW found their real formula Up came amid a album Whenever You Need Somebody was with people like me, Jason and whirlwind of intrigue a worldwide hit shifting 15 million copies. Kylie a little bit later.” surrounding Astley’s From the release of that first LP to its fifth FORMULA AND THEY Yet Rick was always a man identity. Surely he was a single It Would Take A Strong Strong Man, apart on the roster. He was a record company ringer Rick was the biggest-selling artist in the WERE TRYING TO singer who became a pop star; and the real vocalist was world, bar none. But the SAW songwriting the diametric opposite an unknown black R&B singer stranglehold was broken within a year, and CREATE THEIR OWN of Kylie and from Detroit rather than a Rick’s game-changing, self-penned She Jason, freckle-faced youngster Wants To Dance With Me altered the EMPIRE, THEIR ready-made from Lancashire… dynamic when Pete Waterman selected it as stars who “I’m from Newton-le- his next single. The penny dropped – for all OWN LEGACY gradually Willows for God’s sake! Yes, concerned – Astley could survive on his own. learned their craft there was that controversy,” “As I remember it, I wrote that song as vocalists. Astley Rick laughs as he sips on because Pete loved I Wanna Dance With agrees: “Kylie and another glass of rosé. Somebody by Whitney Houston. The guys Jason came from an “We only made the used to listen to a lot of American records acting background video for Never Gonna and analyse their groove. I thought I’d do my and were already Give You Up in the version of the Whitney song. Without 64 65 RICK ASTLEY © Peter Neill really putting his brain into gear, I think Pete musicians, real strings, real drummers, a just sorta went, ‘I love it! That’s your next brass section.’ Elton John’s gonna come in single!’ Then he went off around the and play grand piano for me! If I’d said to building screaming, ‘Rick’s written his Pete, ‘I’ve written this song.